We’ve all heard the cheapest day for airline ticket purchases, for which there has been no definitive ruling about the mythical master mainframe of all airfares that mystically opens up pumpkin coach-class seats at midnight on a Wednesday.

According to site Extrabux, there is also some data out there that backs up weekly price trends for computers, TV’s, jewelry, appliances, books, and more.

And if you want a deal, don’t worry that cyber Monday has passed. The biggest online day of the shopping year usually ends up being something like December 10th. On which, the odds of getting pepper-sprayed/trampled by your fellow retail shopper significantly decrease.

Do you get psyched about the prospect of panning over black and white photos while a narrator describes what is going on in those photos? If you said, “Yeah, buddy!” then Ken Burn’s brand new Prohibition is for you.

With a total running time of 6 hours, it is relatively digestible as the equivalent of watching three movies. And in all seriousness, these black and white photos featuring denizens of the Jazz Age are truly intriguing. Even more so is the occasional bit of footage of flappers dancing, heaven knows the source.

It is not the documentary for you if your heart bleeds at the sight of innocent glass jugs being blasted apart by Volstead enforcers or the occasional bullet-riddled pinstriped gangster.

Fun Prohibition facts:
“Bad guy” Al Capone financed the soup kitchen that fed thousands on Chicago’s south side as the Great Depression took hold. The best charge the feds could level against Mr. Capone (other than keen business acumen in a market they created) is income tax evasion. Shockingly he didn’t declare all his profits on his 1040-EZ form.

Small cities of Bahamanian freighters would drop anchor three miles off the Atlantic coast to make deliveries to local boats. No one cared.

Many “Dry” congresspeople drank, some even accepting deliveries at the Capitol.

Alcohol consumption increased in some cities.

Some milkmen would deliver hooch to your doorstep in innocuous bottles to streamline the purchasing process.

The most expensive multivitamin is the better one, because the price reflects a company with more stringent quality controls, right? Not at all. But the cheaper ones aren’t any good either, right? Wrong again. Some of them are stellar. Some.

It turns out there is pretty much no correlation between cost and quality, from a few cents per dose to some over fifty cents a pill. Some don’t have the the advertised RDA of certain vitamins. Some have unhealthful contaminates. Some are of such low quality they don’t disintegrate properly, rendering them ineffective.

There are a number of variables that can screw up the wi-fi transmission in your house: overall distance, changes between levels, idiosyncrasies between hardware manufacturers, or maddening and unpredictable interference in the walls. If your supposedly “plug-and-play” router is more like hours of “trial and-error” maybe this DIY extender from Discovery Channel is just the ticket. What else are you going to do, use the internet in one set location like it was 2001?

We can only assume the parabolic setup is the same as the increased strength sound is given by the folks on the NFL sidelines holding parabolic dishes.

You may have read the blurb in the newspaper that DPL is the first electronic patent depository in the country. Well, it’s true, but what does that mean to you, John Q. Inventor?

If you have an internet-connected computer, you can already easily search patents to see the originality of your idea the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s search page. However, advanced searchers will find a more streamlined experience using our PubWest searching station, which only Patent Depository libraries hold.
And, of course, we have a direct line of support to the USPTO to help you get your searching endeavors off the ground.

In another month, every break room and front porch is going to be loaded with well-intentioned zucchinis, cucumbers, and tomatoes from benevolent friends and neighbors.

But in the interim, take this recent advice from Lifehacker. According to them, it’s practically a standard equation at the supermarket level regarding deep price markdowns to salvage some return on the product before the freshness date expires.

To compound it, Wednesday may enable you to harness overlap between the the two-week span’s advertising circulars.

It makes sense, and it’s actually true. I figure whatever they aren’t going to be able to work into the next day’s salad bar gets the big red sticker.

Frequently I get seven bagged salad mixes that were $3 once they become $1. That’s the only time to buy. If you pay more than $1, you paid too much. If there’s nothing there for $1, select another style of mix that they are unloading.

Congratulations, you paid $7 instead of $21 for your week’s lunches, you genius.

Apparently the leafy greens in there turn into a pumpkin coach after midnight as opposed to something that is completely edible and delicious we all can safely consume for an additional 7 to 10 days.

A recent convert, and not for lack of trying from others, I’ve rationalized that it is more than win-win. Four wins. That’s right, a quaternary level of winning. Insert hackneyed, two months’ stale Charlie Sheen reference here if you’re that person, followed by a sound life-examination.

1)It’s green. No filters showing up in the landfill. And after you’re done with it, swish the grounds around in some water and dump them onto a potted plant or garden bed of your choice. Apparently, plants love the stuff and worms will turn rock hard clay into aerated loam because you discarded your morning joe bilge there.

3)You get more caffeine. There are scientific types that take this stuff very seriously…to a lab coat level. They’ve determined optimum extraction occurs somewhere between 190 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Your Mr. Coffee percolator is at best about forty degrees shy of that mark. If you slug it out of a wide-brimmed soup cup like I do, cool down time is not an issue.

4)You get a whole bunch of counter space back. Think of all the cool stuff you could put there instead!

Yeah, so you’ve got to learn how to boil a small amount of water and you can’t set a wake-up timer on it. Buck up. You get to feel like a chemistry major without floating a D grade-point average. Also, you’ll have to start looking at the microwave to see if you’re running late. It’s worth it.

Notwithstanding any preconceived notions about either store, I was as shocked as you will be when several unbiased sources pitted the monolithic Wal-Mart machine against a spirited Minnesota-headquartered box store called Target and the latter won. I had no idea this was possible. Any readers out there have anecdotes where David beat Goliath?

According to one savvy reader of The Consumerist, if fellows crunch the numbers and start shaving old school, they can rack up quite a savings. Hundreds of dollars a year, in fact. Many guys marvel at the appalling cost of cartridges that seem calculatingly designed for planned obsolescence.

There are hobbyist sites devoted to the discussion and manufacture of retro hardware, soaps, and brushes.

So in addition to the financial savings, you get to join the fraternity of every guy you’ve seen in a Western, war movie, or Mad Men’s Don Draper.

I’m interested in both factors, but think I may go through more than $160 a year in bandaids.